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Xiden
Classification and Dialects Xiden (pronounced /xiden/) is an analytical a posteriori artlang with ergative-absolutive alignment. Various dialects of Xiden may pronounce the voiceless velar fricative, /x/, as the voiceless uvular fricative, /χ/. These dialects may be used by people who have just learned the language who do not have a /x/ sound in their native dialect, or not yet learned to pronounce /x/ correctly. Phonology Consonants This also includes the co-articulated voiceless labial-velar fricative, /ʍ/ Vowels Diphthongs include: /aɪ/, /eɪ/, /ia/, /io/, /oi/, and /oʊ/ Phonotactics # ©©V©© # Onset - no /ŋ/ # Coda - no /h/, /j/, and /ʍ/ # VʔV # Fricatives and Plosives may never cluster together. Orthography Grammar Nouns Pronoun-Case Table In Xiden, there are two cases for nouns, the Locative and Genitive cases, and there are three for pronouns: Genitive, Ergative, and Absolutive. Xiden also distinguishes between the exclusive we and the inclusive we. Any vowel written in ''bold-italics ''refers to the schwa, /ə/ for ease of translation to the IPA. Verbs Syntax Morphosyntactic Alignment Xiden has Ergative-Absolutive alignment. This highlights the agent of a sentence in the Ergative case, and the subject and patient of a sentence in the Absolutive case. Xiden uses verbocentric' '''word order, meaning that the verb is always the centre of a standard sentence, with the only exception being that the subject can come after the verb if the action being performed is not deliberate. For example, this literal-translation sentence: ''X, which means that person X slept "by accident". Using this alignment, the ergative agent is moved to the right of the sentence, making the word order essentially OVS. For example: SAW X. ''X is the one performing the action, and therefore the agent, so X is moved to the right. If we wished to align X to the left while still conveying the message "X is the performer of the action", we'd have to use the Antipassive voice. We do this by getting rid of the patient and thereby highlighting the agent as the subject as a result. ''SAW X -> SAW. Also, indirect objects! Indirect objects are treated like a parameter of the absolutive. An example would be written as Y GAVE X, or in Nominative-Accusative Programming Notation: {sentence(X, verb.GIVE(PAST), BOOK(Y));}. As you can see, the absolutive argument takes the parameters of the indirect object, which in our case is Y. So, using the antipassive voice to bring the agent to the left, we would get: Y GAVE X -> Y GAVE, which would translate to "The X gave to the Y", which doesn't seem grammatically correct in English, In English, we would say "The X gave something to the Y" instead, as the verb "to give" in English always requires a parameter, which in our case in the unspecified "something". And this is the great thing about Xiden. Verb parameters are completely optional. Now let's take a look at prepositions. In English, we could say "The X arrived at 10:00". As you can see, the verb "to arrive" is intransitive, but here it is being used as if it were a transitive verb. That's essentially the job of prepositions. Xiden may handle this like: AT ARRIVED X. As you can see, in Xiden, we are treating the preposition as an indirect object, as the preposition is promoting the intransitive verb to a transitive verb, and thus is involved with the object. Now, if we use the antipassive voice, it would be correct to say AT ARRIVED but now that there is no object, the preposition loses its purpose, and thus it would collapse into ARRIVED. ''But what about prepositions used for transitive verbs? Xiden may handle this like: ''10:00 AT SAW X -> AT SAW X. As you can see, in this case, Xiden treats the preposition and its parameter both as indirect objects in the first statement. But when we use the antipassive voice to get rid of Y, 10:00 is promoted to the direct object. Therefore, we can use the antipassive voice yet again to collapse it down to AT SAW -> SAW. ''And, of course, it all makes grammatical sense. "X saw Y at 10:00" -> "X saw (something) at 10:00" -> "X saw (something) at (sometime)" -> "X saw (something)". Now the important thing to denote here is that Xiden is a Fluid-V system, meaning that actions with volition are treated normally, and actions treated with non-volition treat the subject ergatively, which we discussed at the start. But what if the action was an accident with an object involved? What would that look like? Well, it may look something like this: ''SAW X -> X AND Y SAW X. Here, we complicate the sentence, so we disclose that X saw something accidentally, and X saw Y, which we know was an accident from before. Here, we could use pronouns to make it simpler. X AND Y SAW X -> X AND Y SAW dheipa -> dhei AND Y SAW dheipa. And that's all you need to know about Xiden Morphosyntactic Alignment. Unless there is something I'm forgetting. Oh yeah, the Locative case! The Locative case would act as a preposition attaching itself onto an object. How can we make the antipassive voice work? Of course this would work: WALKED X-BY -> WALKED. But what about indirect objects? (G)Y WALKED X -> Y WALKED -> WALKED. Here, we get rid of the Z, and thereby the locative case attached to it, then we collapse the sentence into Y WALKED, however the verb "to walk" is intransitive, and there are no prepositions or locative cases left to promote it to transitivity, therefore the Y is invalid, so we get rid of that and the sentence becomes WALKED. Simple. Anyway, that seems to be it for Xiden's morphosyntactic alignment. Just for fun, here is an advanced LT sentence for you to try and decipher. WALKED B AND A SAW B THEN BOOK (G)A C 13:42 AT GAVE B. Lexicon Example text